The 2011 Undergraduate Science Research Symposium

The
opportunity for students and faculty to collaborate on research has always been
a strength of the undergraduate experience at William and Mary and the February
2011 Undergraduate Science Research Symposium showed that the tradition is
alive and well as 10 psychology and neuroscience undergraduates and three
faculty presented the results of their research. The topics of research ranged
from the impact on children when their mothers are incarcerated, to the effect
of nicotine on hippocampus-dependent memory.

INCARCERATED
MOTHERS AND THEIR CHILDREN

With
the help of undergrads Rachel Miller and Adrian Bravo, Assistant Professor Danielle
Dallaire expanded her existing body of research on how a parent’s incarceration
affects the life and development of his or her children. The focus of this
particular research project was the effect of maternal incarceration and
violence exposure on child behavior and emotional development. They
interviewed 31 incarcerated mothers, their 41 children, and the 31 caregivers
who provided for those children during the period of their mother’s
incarceration. The study produced several findings, among them that there is a
correlation between the number of incarcerations and mother-reported child
behavior problems.

ADULT EXPOSURE TO NICOTINE AND HIPPOCAMPUS-DEPENDENT MEMORY

There has been a considerable amount
of research conducted on the effects of nicotine, but one area that has been
under-researched is the effect of nicotine on memory. Associate Professor
Robert Barnet formed a research team that included Christopher Sowers, Don
Anderson, Melissa McCue, Bryan Kline, and Casey Sears to investigate this
through animal research. Using facilities of the newly completed Integrated Science
Center, they exposed two groups of rats to either saline or nicotine for a
two-week period. Half of each group was
exposed to nicotine (or saline) during adolescence and the other half was
exposed to nicotine (or saline) as adults.
Later, all rats were trained in the context-conditioning paradigm which requires
formation of new memories and is thought to rely on the hippocampus. Their
research revealed that only rats exposed to nicotine during adolescence were
impaired in their ability to form new memories and learn in the context
conditioning paradigm, suggesting adolescence is a unique period of
vulnerability for the impairing effects of nicotine on brain systems
responsible for memory formation.

EXAMINING LONGITUDINAL DATA FOR AT-RISK ADOLESCENTS

Although developmentalists have long
understood how temperamental characteristics affect outcomes later in life,
this literature has tended to examine temperamental risk factors relative to
temperamental protective factors. For her honors thesis Engin Ege examined archival
data sets from a large, longitudinal study done in Chicago neighborhoods to assess
temperamental protective factors that protect at-risk adolescents against the
development of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Findings
indicate that higher activity levels and greater sociability protect against
the development of internalizing problem behaviors.

IMPULSIVE DECISIONS: LESS NOW OR MORE LATER?

Impulsive decisions are associated with numerous psychological
disorders, including drug abuse, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and
pathological gambling. Associate Professor Josh Burk collaborated with
undergrads Akie Fujita and Mohammad Mian to study impulsive decision making by
investigating behavior in a delay discounting task. Delay discounting is the
extent to which an organism devalues a reward as the time to receive that
reward is increased. In this procedure, the subject is typically given a choice
between an immediately accessible, small reward and a delayed, larger reward.
In the present experiment they examined whether delay discounting would occur
in rats for a water reward. They found that subjects strongly preferred a
larger reward when that large reward was immediately accessible. However, when
the large reward was delayed, they found that subjects were more likely to
switch and prefer the smaller reward. Their research further expands the
existing known conditions for which delay discounting can be documented and
offers a novel paradigm for assessing impulsive decision making.

CONGRATULATIONS

Congratulations to all faculty and undergraduate students
who collaborated in this research and then presented findings at the 2011
Undergraduate Research Science Symposium. Research of this nature can often be
tedious, and time-consuming. It requires a combination of creativity and clear
thinking to define a construct, operationalize that construct, design an
experiment to produce the necessary data, analyze the data, interpret
results, and apply findings to real-world problems and situations.
Congratulations to all faculty and students who made these contributions to
science. We hope you keep it up.